In Spite Of Xfl, Aaa Football Just Might Work

Warner Hessler

In honor of the XFL's passing away the other day, I guess the decent thing to do would be to give it a nice burial, complete with an epitaph.

But what would it say? Here lies the XFL, which wasn't very extreme, the football wasn't very good and, with eight teams, it wasn't much of a league?

Maybe we could get Rod Smart, the Las Vegas running back who had educators and concerned parents cringing when he put "He Hate Me'' on the back of his jersey, to write it. He might say "They Hate Me,'' as in the 98- plus percent of the television viewers who didn't turn on NBC on Saturday nights after the much-hyped opener.

Whatever it was, the XFL is dead, just another in a long list of leagues that tried and failed to cash in on the popularity of professional and college football in the United States. May Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura, Jerry Lawler, The Rock, He Hate Me, and all the other loudmouths who promised more than they could deliver, rest in peace.

What the XFL did do, though, was reinforce my belief that minor-league football on the Triple-A level could succeed in late winter and early spring months. Every XFL game I watched seemed to have at least 20,000 in attendance. It could work but, please, don't let McMahon sit in on the planning meetings.

The king of scripted wrestling shows is said to be a bright and very organized man, but he must have turned off his brain when he put the XFL together.

It was promoted as a real-life video game with large doses of phony realism, just like wrestling. And present and former wrestlers, not football players, were major actors in the promos. League officials said the XFL was out to attract the highly visible, but very elusive, male in the 18-35 age range. Just like the NFL. But the product looked more attractive to males in the 12-24 age group. Just like wrestling.

It promoted manly rules, microphones on the field, cameras in the dressing rooms and cleavage on the sidelines. It promised more spectacle than sport, but the off-the-field spectacle was pretty lame. Even the strippers who masqueraded as cheerleaders didn't take their clothes off.

On the field, the product was about as disorganized as it was everywhere else. McMahon made up things as he went along. Bump-and-run pass coverage was banned after a couple of weeks to add offense, the clock was allowed to run following an incomplete pass after one of the games ran too long and delayed "Saturday Night Live," and 2-point and 3-point conversions were added for the playoffs.

In all, the league looked dysfunctional and did not appeal to a single demographic. There wasn't enough wrestling for the 12-24 bunch, or enough football for the 18-35 set. In the end, NBC set a record for the lowest prime-time rating by a Big Three network and broke it twice.

What makes me think Triple-A football could work is the opening-night rating of 9.5. That means approximately 10 million viewers tuned in on a Saturday night, the worst night of all for television ratings, and I assumed they tuned in hoping to find a brand of football they would like.

They didn't like McMahon's over-hyped, ever-changing brand, though, as ratings fell to 1.6 by Week 7. Maybe they'd like a different brand, one that focused more on the most popular specator sport in the country. Maybe they'd like a sport that joined hands with the NFL and helped the league develop players at the two areas in which the talent level is the lowest -- quarterback and offensive line.

Joining hands with the NFL and a Triple-A league might be a respectable way for NBC to get back into the pro football business. Joining hands with McMahon was a mistake. The XFL was an embarrassment to everyone.

Warner Hessler can be reached at 247-4648 or by e-mail at whessler@dailypress.com